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Tuesday, September 30, 2008

I don't pay too much attention to BlogNetNews Georgia. I'm no tear down the walls zealot as are some of my friends, but I do find some of their methods distasteful so generally I ignore them all together.

But occasionally I do glance at their "Highest Rated" rating. Maybe out of hubris, maybe because my curiousity into how things work cause me to attempt to figure out their heuristics.

At the top is a blog I have previously never seen and it is rated as a perfect 10.00 by users. Not that surprising considering I doubt many people bother with the rating system and it would be perfectly reasonable for a new voice to use this innocuous platitude metric to garner a little notice.

But imagine my surprise when I saw every other Georgia blog rated as a 1.00. Every single one except this new blog.

It really means nothing in the greater context. The silly indexes of a would be credibility peddler mean little. For we are a community - a community where those of absolute opposites cohabitat (although at times uneasily) because even when we differ we always respect.

Any community ultimately stands on respect.

And we always remember how someone introduces themselves to our community.

I don't go over to BNN often. Their rankings make no sense. I love how they say their methodology is "proprietary". Right. That new blog that shall remain nameless... interesting how it's also among the "most influential".

It really means nothing in the greater context. The silly indexes of a would be credibility peddler mean little.

Exactly.

And I had forgotten about BNN for a while, actually (just like Dre). The last time I thought about them was a little while ago when their Twitter account started following my friend Jenny, whose loathing for Dave Mastio is well documented. But Rusty's right, a surefire way to get top ranking is to politely, and then not so politely, ask for your blog to be removed. How fucked up is that? No opt out AND he loves to fuck around! Some people have too much time on their hands... and are former Bush speechwriters... but I digress...

It's been obvious for awhile now that BNN over-weights the importance of the numerical rankings in determining where a blog falls on the influence scale. So, a new blog comes in and ranks itself highly and ranks everyone else as low as possible, and suddenly they end up on the influence index. It just shows their system is garbage.

I guess if I had the personal experience you guys had (Rusty and Amber) I suppose my dander would be a little more up. And since you're my friends maybe it should be anyway. I suppose I'm of the "wither on the vine" philosophy.

But really the point here is not about BNN but I think it says a lot that a new voice comes along and instead of politely introducing itself, the first action is to trash everyone else in the room. And to use BNN with its history as the vehicle for that trashing? Not good.

Maybe it was a ham handed misstep. Maybe it was a rogue member who thought they were doing the right thing.

I guess we won't know unless the owner of this new blog steps forward and does some splainin.

I wondered over to BNN last night and checked the highest rated. I do this occasionally to see how much data I can infer they are receiving i.e. how many blogs are rated and how many apparent votes this week.

Usually there's only one or two blogs rated and usually they are either rated a 10.00 (i.e. owner went in to pimp their place) or 1.00 (i.e. somebody's got a grudge).

There's rarely anything in between which speaks quite a bit to the heuristics of one BlogNetNews.

Anywho. Last night when I glanced at the ratings it appeared every single blog tracked by BNN was rated. That's what we in the bidness call an outlier.

What was even more curious was everyone was rated a 1.00. Except one blog which was rated a 10.00.

And it was a blog I'd never heard of. So I checked it out. It is indeed a blog of a certain political persuasion which was started in September but only became truly active in the last week.

A new blog which only becomes active in the past week suddenly appears as the highest rated in Georgia because someone apparently manipulated they easily manipulated BNN index.